


the body keeps the score

by illimerence



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 11:57:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20929850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illimerence/pseuds/illimerence
Summary: In which Mahanon is captured, then rescued, then recovers.





	the body keeps the score

**Author's Note:**

> this was written as a birthday gift for my partner who i love a whole bunch and not just because they love dragon age as much as i do. they requested bull/lavellan hurt/comfort with a heavy dose of angst. it was only meant to be a couple thousand words...

So Mahanon gets caught, somehow, somewhere in the mountains of the Hissing Wastes. They’ve been walking for hours trying to find the Venatori camp, and when they do, instead of setting up camp a little way away and resting or waiting for it to get light, they make a very hasty, very stupid (in hindsight) decision to attack under cover of dark.

It has to be nearing midnight. The moon is full and cold in the sky above them, and the Venatori camp is poorly lit by a few small campfires. Mahanon and Sera can see well in the dark, and Bull’s other senses are more than enough to get by on; Cole, creepy kid that he is, says something about being able to ‘feel’ where things are before he gets to them, so there’s that problem solved.

Mahanon counts eight guards patrolling the perimeter of the camp, mostly warriors, two rogues and one mage. “The others must be asleep,” he says quietly. “If we take out the guards quick enough, we can be in and out before the rest of them even know we’re here.”

Mahanon was no strategist when Bull first met him, but since then he’s come almost as far as Bull himself in terms of battlefield control. Bull trusts him with his life.

“Sera, you get up top around the left. I’ll take the right. Cole, head in first, Bull will back you up.” Cole nods once and disappears into the night.

“Bull? What’s your read?”

Bull shrugs. “I don’t know. I trust you, but… be careful, yeah? It’s a little to quiet out here. Gets me nervous.”

“I’m always careful,” Mahanon says, which is a lie, because while Mahanon is a decent strategist and an excellent battlemage, his style of magic rivals Dorian’s in terms of careless flashiness. Bull’s not about to call him out on it, though.

He leans up on his tiptoes to press a kiss to the corner of Bull’s mouth (Sera stifles a snicker) and says, “See you on the other side,” before jogging into the shadows to the right of the camp.

Bull stretches, pulls his axe from his back, and strides into the camp, not trying for stealth at all. One of the warriors is already dead when he gets there, throat slit and bleeding out onto the sand; another sees Bull and opens his mouth to shout a warning to his comrades but crumples instead, and Cole straightens up behind his back, daggers dripping black in the moonlight.

_This is going to be over before it’s begun, _Bull thinks. And then all hell breaks loose.

Venatori swarm out of tents, from shadowed corners and behind crumbling walls. Bull has just enough time to feel the static of Mahanon’s barrier wash over his skin, and then he’s in the middle of it.

The battle is a blur as it always is: the first drop of blood he spills goes straight to his head, and then all he is is a weapon, nothing but an extension of his axe. He’s hungry for it, the need for violence pulling at his veins, and he cuts down Venatori after bloody Venatori, each kill spurring him on.

Later, he’ll remember laughing, deep from his chest: “Come and get it, ‘Vints!” And he’ll remember Mahanon’s spells bursting in the midst of it, his lightning crackling across Venatori flesh, a burst of sparks exploding from one rogue’s mouth and eyes right before Bull cleaves him in two.

He won’t remember a conspicuous absence of magic from the last moments of the battle, and he’ll curse himself for not noticing sooner.

The fight’s over quickly, as these fights often are, and Bull comes back to himself in a field of corpses, the sand dark with blood. He leans heavily on his axe as he catalogues the new pains in his body. The back of his shoulder is cold, the tell-tale sign of a deep cut that will turn to pain as he comes down; one side of his ribcage blisters from a fire spell he didn’t notice in time to dodge. His knee is stiff, but that’s old news.

“Everyone alive?” he calls.

Sera pokes her head out from behind a wooden structure. “Got all my bits and everything,” she says.

Cole steps out of the air beside him. “Black and red, head in pieces, ringing in his ears,” he says, his voice urgent. “He’s still alive, but far away –“ and Bull’s blood turns to ice. How could he not have noticed?

“Boss?” he calls. There’s no reply. “Lavellan?”

“He can’t hear you,” Cole says. “I can’t – he’s getting quieter. Further.”

“Mahanon!” Bull bellows. “Kadan! Where –“

“Gone,” Cole says quietly. “I can’t feel him anymore.”

Bull hears himself roar, an ugly, broken sound torn from his throat. “Which way?” he growls at Cole. “Which way did they take him?” Cole points silently. “We’re following,” Bull says. “Come on. We’re going to get him and we’re going to bring him back and he’s going to be okay. Come on! Move!”

Sera’s face is uncharacteristically pale, her eyes wide. “We can’t,” she says. “You know this shite better than I do, we need to – to – whatsit, go back to camp, get the others, make a plan –“

“You’re right, you know shit all about this,” Bull spits. “We have to go after him, we can’t just – we have to –“

He chokes, his throat closing up. Sera is right. They need to regroup, wait for reinforcements, find more information about the Venatori presence in the area. Make a controlled attack on wherever they’re taking Mahanon. They go after them now, they’re overtired, they fight sloppy. They’re no use to Mahanon, or anyone.

“Fuck,” Bull says. Every bone in his body is urging him onward, screaming at him to go, find him, save him, that every minute longer is another minute Mahanon’s scared and in pain and possibly – no.

No. It’s no good, this train of thought. It’s not going to help him, and it’s not going to help Mahanon.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he’s not sure if he’s apologising to Sera, or to Mahanon, or to himself. He feels as if his legs are going to go from underneath him. He feels as if he might throw up. “I’m sorry.”

+

Mahanon wakes on the cold stone floor of a windowless room not much larger than he is. His head feels like it’s about to split open, an invisible dagger lodged between his eyes. His face aches, the entire right side of it tender and bruised, and he can feel a hollow in his mouth where a tooth should be, the gum ragged and raw. He can taste blood, and under that, something bitter and dangerous.

That’s the extent of the damage. It’s not bad, Mahanon decides. He can run if he needs to, can fight if he must.

The glow from his mark illuminates the room, if you could call it that. It’s barely long enough to lie down in, his feet touching the wall, and if he spread his arms he could easily put his hands flat against the walls. The door is a solid slab of stone, with no handle that he can see.

He drags himself upright, sits with his back against the wall, facing the door, and reaches for magic he’s not sure he’ll find.

The pain in his head burns brighter instantly, the knife twisting. All the breath is knocked out of him. He grits his teeth against the cry of pain that threatens to escape. The only thing he can do is breathe through it, deep, ragged gasps, and wait for it to subside.

It does, slowly, until the pain is back to where it was when he first woke up. It’s almost a relief. He sags back against the wall.

All his thoughts come warped, slow and not all there, his mind fogged with pain and whatever cruel variant of magebane they’ve dosed him with. The only thought that comes clear, that sticks in his brain and doesn’t dissipate before he can catch it, is this: _Bull will come for me._ Not _somebody will come for me,_ not _the Inquisition will come for me._

_Bull will come for me._

He’s still thinking this hours later, when the door slowly scrapes open and a dull orange light illuminates three figures in the doorway. Mahanon looks up.

Two men and a woman stand blocking the entrance, all in Venatori robes and armour, all equally mean-looking. One man carries a staff. The woman has a heavy hammer on her belt, on hand on the handle in a way that makes Mahanon think hysterically of Cullen.

“Inquisitor!” the man in the middle, the one with no weapon, exclaims. “I’m so glad to see you’re awake. Augusta here has no sense of subtlety; we weren’t sure if you would.” His accent is upper class. Mahanon says nothing. He keeps his eyes level with the Venatori’s.

The man with no weapon tilts his head slightly. “Nothing to say? No matter. We have plans for you, Inquisitor.”

He steps forward into the room, crouches in front of Mahanon, and reaches out to grip him by the jaw. He turns his face this way and that, studying him. “My, you are a pretty one, aren’t you?” Mahanon stares him down, unflinching. The man with no weapon takes a vial from his pouch, uncorks it with a thumb. “Be a good boy and take your medicine.”

The hand on Mahanon’s jaw squeezes painfully as he tries not to hear the echo of Bull’s voice in his captor’s words.

_Good boy,_ Bull had told him that first afternoon together, when he’d let Bull pin his arms above his head without a struggle, kept his eyes open and on Bull’s face as Bull slowly took him apart. _Good boy,_ Bull had murmured just last night – or has it been longer? – when Mahanon had stayed completely silent while Bull moved inside of him.

“Good boy,” the man with no weapon tells him, and forces his lips apart to pour a thick, bitter potion into his mouth. Magebane.

_I won’t let you take this from me,_ Mahanon thinks. The instant the man with no weapon lets go of his jaw he spits it back in his face.

Mahanon is expecting it when the man backhands him across the face, his rings gouging twin cuts across his cheek, but he still grunts with the pain of it. “That was stupid,” the man with no weapon says, wiping the potion from his face. “Let’s try this again, shall we? Romulus, if you would?”

Mahanon feels the familiar crackle of magic, and then his body seizes, his muscles locking up. The man with no weapon forces his mouth open again, his fingers digging in painfully, and pours another potion into Mahanon’s mouth, straight down his throat. The pain in his head sparks, blinding him for a split second, and then subsides.

Mahanon lies stiff against the wall, body still bound with magic. The man with no weapon and the woman with the hammer – Augusta – each take an arm and haul him upright, and there’s nothing he can do as they drag him from his cell.

+

Bull paces the camp, turning the situation over and over in his head. How could he have let this happen? Mahanon trusted him to watch his back, keep him safe, and he let him down. Is still letting him down, leaving to imprisonment and whatever tortures the Venatori have planned for him while Bull does nothing. The reinforcements won’t arrive for another two days. All Bull can do is worry, and train, and force himself to get the minimal amount of sleep needed to keep himself functional.

The Inquisition soldiers in the camp keep their distance from him: good. Six months ago he would have been able to put up a front, talk shit with the soldiers and pretend like he’s not falling apart, but since becoming – since the Storm Coast his acting skills have been getting kind of rusty.

Cole tries to help, insisting on tugging at that particular thread, _it wasn’t your fault_ and all that, but he’s just making it worse. At least the kid acknowledges it.

Sera tries to cheer him up with dirty jokes and stories about people she used to know; this is better than Cole’s probing, but still does nothing for Bull more than a momentary distraction. As soon as she’s done talking he’s back to worrying, and pacing, and feeling alternately overwhelming anger and gut-wrenching guilt.

He finds himself filling the empty hours planning the myriad of ways he will murder Mahanon’s captors. That doesn’t help either, but it’s better than thinking about what they might be doing to Mahanon right now.

+

Mahanon slumps against the wall of his cell, waiting. He’s spent the last few hours practicing standing on his bad leg, the one Augusta had taken such delight in mangling over and over while the man with no weapon (and no name, still, after – how long as it been, anyway? – hours, days… weeks?) had threatened and cajoled and coerced, but never succeeded in getting what he wanted from Mahanon.

“Isn’t magic wonderful?” he’d said as Romulus healed Mahanon yet again, bone and cartilage and tendon knitting together all wrong. Technically, his leg is fully healed, but Mahanon had braced himself against the wall of his cell and slowly put weight on his leg and pain had shot through him, enough to make his vision swim.

He thinks, now, that he can bear it long enough to do what he has to do. Not that he knows how far it needs to carry him, or how many Venatori he has to fight his way through. He’s still certain that Bull is coming for him. He’s just not sure he’ll make it in time. He doesn’t know how much more he can take.

The torture he’s been put through has not been particularly creative, but it has been brutal. Mahanon knows he’s strong, but he’s not _that_ strong. He needs to find a way to get out of here before he breaks.

He’s been preparing to do this for – well, he has no real way to know how much time has passed here, but he’s been holding the magebane in his mouth, spitting as much of it out as possible, the last four times they’d fed it to him. That’s not to say that he’s completely free of magebane – it’s not exactly easy to hide that you still have liquid in your mouth without swallowing any of it – but the pain in his head has faded to something not unlike a hangover, and he can think actual coherent thoughts now.

He doesn’t have a staff to focus it, but he can feel the fade, and he’s strong enough that he doesn’t need a focus for basic attacks. He can feel the storm in his gut, lightning gathering in the tips of his fingers. He’s getting out of here, and he’s taking as many Venatori out as he can as he does so.

It’s still a long while before he hears the scrape of the door beginning to open, but when it does, he’s ready. He shoves both hands out in front of him, pulling the storm from the fade and pushing it out through his palms. His head throbs with the effort of it. Lightning explodes out of him in an uncontrolled blast, scorching the area around it. There’s a shout from one of Mahanon’s captors, and he pulls again, ripping lightning from the air

He can smell burnt flesh. When he shunts the shattered remains of the door the rest of the way open, Augusta, Romulus and the man with no weapon are in a smouldering heap on the floor. Augusta and Romulus are motionless, but the man with no weapon is groaning quietly, an agonized sound, and his arm twitches weakly in Mahanon’s direction.

Mahanon takes Romulus’ staff – what’s left of it – and puts the blade against his throat. “This is too kind for you,” he says, and kills him.

He can hear voices, many of them, and footsteps: his escape attempt hasn’t gone unnoticed. He uses Romulus’ burnt, split staff as a cane and picks a direction at random.

The air is stale and cold, and the walls and floor are all rough stone. There are no windows in sight, the hallways lit instead by torches mounted next to each doorway. He thinks he might be underground.

Two Venatori rush around the corner, and Mahanon knocks them down with a weak mind blast, puts the blade of the staff through each of their throats so they stay down. His head is pounding, each spell that he casts increasing the pressure, but the pain shooting through his leg with each step is more than enough distraction from it.

He dispatches two more Venatori as he rounds the corner. His ears are ringing, the sounds of shouting dull and distorted, like he’s underwater. He doesn’t know which direction they’re coming from, which way he needs to be moving, but he forces himself forward anyway.

He’s getting out of here if it kills him.

+

The reinforcements arrive right on schedule, and Bull is painfully relieved to see all of his Chargers and one Tevinter Altus heading the group. Krem offers an “Alright, Chief?” and a sympathetic clap on the shoulder; Dorian offers to share his hipflask. They still have to take a short rest – the ride from Skyhold to the Hissing Wastes is a long one, after all – but Bull’s boys are here, and will do anything that needs to be done and more, and Bull feels a little calmer.

Only a little, though.

The six hours they take to eat and sleep is still six hours more Mahanon could be in pain. When they finally march on the Venatori base, Bull is halfway to reaver already, desperate to get something, anything done.

The Venatori base in the Hissing Wastes turns out to be under a fucking mountain. They arrive in the hours before dawn, hoping for as much of a surprise assault as is possible with the Venatori aware of how valuable their captive is. Once they’re in sigh of the entrance Rocky turns to Bull and says, “Once your boy’s out safe I can bring the whole thing down.”

Bull nods, his eyes on the entrance to the base, on the guards stationed there. “Do it,” he says. He sees Rocky salute in his peripheral vision and disappear, to be replaced by Krem.

“What’s the plan?”

Bull hasn’t got a plan past _find Mahanon and rip as many ‘Vints apart as possible on the way,_ but he’s always been good at thinking on his feet. “Rogues in first,” he says. “We take out the guards at the entrance, get as much of the layout of the inside as possible. Rocky needs to get to the centre to prep the explosives. Then warriors, with Dorian and Dalish for back-up. Spread out quick, kill as many ‘Vints as you can, find the Inquisitor, and get out before the whole place comes down.”

“Got it,” Krem says, and turns to repeat Bull’s instructions to the company.

It’s while they’re preparing to enter the base that they hear it: the low rumble of thunder, loud, like it’s directly overhead – but the sky is cloudless, and the sound is coming from under, not above. Bull watches the guards look at each other. One of them says something to the others, his mouth too obscured for Bull to lipread. Then there’s another rumble, the ground quivering slightly beneath their feet.

At that, the majority of the Venatori guards draw their weapons and head into the base, leaving only a skeleton crew of two at the door. Bull turns to Dorian sharply.

“Was that -?”

Dorian nods, once.

“Is it -?”

“It’s too far away to tell,” Dorian says. “At this range it could be any talented storm mage.”

“Fuck.” The base is crawling with mages. An accident? A retaliation to an uncooperative prisoner? Or..?

Bull signals for the rogues to head in, and it’s barely a minute later that the two guards in the entrance fall dead. He waits to hear more thunder, but none comes. He takes a deep breath. He can’t go full reaver, can’t let the killing wipe his mind blank, but he’s already so angry that he feels he might burst out of his skin.

Inside the base the air smells of ozone and blood. The entranceway is too empty. Bull can hear the clamour of fighting, of clashing swords and battle spells and shouting, coming from deeper within. He rushes forward, Krem covering his blind side and Dorian at his back.

They fight their way through what Venatori guards are left in the halls. Bull’s axe is almost too long to swing in the claustrophobic space carved out of the mountain.

They arrive at the fighting, and it’s chaotic: the guards have obviously been attempting to respond to something, but Bull’s rogues have interrupted them, corralling them into an intersection of hallways towards the centre of the base. Here, the air is thick with static, making the hair on Bull’s arms and the back of his neck stand on end.

There are guards at the far end of one of the intersecting halls, away from the main body of the battle. As Bull watches, some invisible force sends them flying back, revealing – the centre of Bull’s chest fills with something warm and familiar and he feels whole for the first time in days.

Mahanon stands tall amidst fallen Venatori, his hair loose and wild around his shoulders, barefoot, in the same robes he was wearing when he was taken.

Electricity crackles purple and white along his arms, and his hair and robes twirl around him, caught in a contained windstorm. He looks glorious and dangerous and beautiful and _alive._ Bull thinks, _ataashi._

He watches Mahanon slam the butt of the broken staff he’s using into the ground, one hand clenched in front of him, and lightning slams into the prone bodies of the Venatori he’s knocked down. Bull laughs with relief and pride, unable to hold back, and Mahanon hears him, turns towards him and a grin splits his bruised face, bright and happy.

But there’s blood on his teeth. There’s blood dripping from his nose. Mahanon takes a step towards Bull and falters, his legs unsteady underneath him. Then the staff drops from his hand, his eyes roll back in his head, and he falls.

+

Mahanon remembers the journey back to Skyhold in bits and pieces, blurry and nonsensical like the fade. The creaking of the carriage and the clatter of its wheels. The riverwater bitterness of elfroot on his tongue. Familiar voices speaking in hushed tones. The rush of water, the rustle of trees in the wind, the rhythmic clop of horse hooves on packed dirt. The smell of Bull, sword oil and leather and sweat and alcohol; the heat and solidity of his body and the deep rumble of his voice.

The pain in Mahanon’s head, so sharp and so bright when he’d fought his way from his cell, shrinks slowly to nothing. The pain in his leg (and his ribs, and his face, and his shoulders – Creators, how did he not notice it before?) grows to fill the space the magebane headache has left.

He sleeps in stops and starts, some new pain or sudden noise or nightmare startling him awake almost as soon as his eyes close, but when he’s awake everything feels fake or far away.

He knows that Bull is always near him. He can feel him, even if he’s not directly by his side, and it makes it easier, makes him feel a little less like he’s drowning, like he’s lost. The whole time he was stuck in the dungeon of the Venatori base he felt nothing but anger, pure and clear even through the fog that the magebane made of his mind. Now he’s out, and mostly he just feels… small.

They reach Skyhold in the early afternoon, the sky cloudless blue, the sun high overhead. Being back in Skyhold’s walls in the watery light of a pleasant spring afternoon feels entirely surreal, like at any moment he’ll wake up and he’ll be back in that tiny cell in the Venatori base, or worse. A shiver passes through him at the thought, that this might all be his desperate brain blocking out the pain of torture.

Bull’s hand is warm on his back even through his clothes. It’s solid. Real. “You good?” Bull asks him, his voice quiet, like it is when they’re alone.

Mahanon nods jerkily. He holds his head high and his shoulders square, and he leans on his staff for support as they walk through the grounds. He has an image to uphold. Not in the way Josephine thinks of it, but in the way Bull had shown him the first week they’d been at Skyhold: a place in the hearts of hopeless people, people who have been through so much more than he has with so much less thanks, and he refuses to let them down.

He stops for a moment in the entrance to the main hall to speak with his advisors, although later he won’t recall anything that was said. When he finally gets to the door of his chambers he’s exhausted, the kind that digs in deep and sinks into your bones. The fifteen minutes it took to get rom the carriage to his rooms felt like a lifetime.

Bull closes the door behind them. He hasn’t left Mahanon’s side for a moment, solid and sure at his shoulder. Mahanon knows, when he feels his legs start to give underneath him, that Bull will catch him. And he does, scoops him up and holds him against his chest to carry him up the stairs into his room proper.

His bed is too soft, his blankets too warm. He was only imprisoned a week but it feels wrong to have these luxuries. Mahanon sits at the foot of his bed with his good leg tucked up under him and the other stiff and straight in front of him as Bull sets and lights the fire, picking at his nails for lack of anything else to do with his hands. When the fire is done and crackling away (_I could have done that,_ Lavellan thinks, but doesn’t say) Bull comes to sit next to him.

“What do you need, Kadan?”

Mahanon doesn’t know and he shrugs helplessly. No, that’s not true – what he needs is for Bull to already know what he needs, to look after him like he’s looked after him so many times before. He doesn’t know how to say that though, doesn’t know how to speak without his voice failing him.

There’s a long stretch of silence – not an uncomfortable one – where Mahanon can feel Bull’s eyes on him, studying him. “Okay,” Bull says finally, and gets up.

Mahanon’s chest contracts painfully and it seems almost impossible to get the breath he needs to say, “Wait, where are you going?” His voice is high-pitched and panicked, hardly recognisable as himself.

Bull puts his hands on Mahanon’s shoulders. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m just going to ask one of the guards at your door to have a few things sent up. Is that alright?”

Mahanon breathes out shakily and nods. Bull ends up having a tub brought up – one with a heat rune carved into it so the water stays warm – and a plate of fruit and cheese and dried meat.

Mahanon doesn’t realise until he sees the tub how disgusting he feels. He’s grimy with dirt and sweat and blood, his robes stiff with it, and his skin crawls at the thought of it. He stands to undress, suddenly desperate to be out of his clothes, but his leg screams as he does and he has to sit down quickly.

“Hey,” Bull says, “careful,” and he helps Mahanon up. He undresses him, his hands are steady on the laces and buckles, a familiar action turned unfamiliar by context. Mahanon is worried that Bull will make a big deal of his injuries, the keloid scars on his upper arms and the mottled mess of his leg, but he doesn’t even acknowledge them, just guides Mahanon to the tub and lets him hold on to him as he climbs in.

The water is almost hot enough to be scalding. Mahanon shudders as he lowers himself into it: it’s nearly too hot to bear, but it’s good, too, feels like it’s stripping away the events of the past week as it sinks into his bones.

Bull has the bar of embrium-infused soap and the soft washcloth Mahanon uses when he’s at Skyhold ready for him. “You wanting help?” Bull asks, and Mahanon shakes his head.

“No. Just – talk to me. Please.”

Bull pulls the chair from Mahanon’s desk to beside the tub, sits. “Okay,” he says, “did I ever tell you about the time -?”

Mahanon soaps himself as Bull relays one of the Charger’s many adventures. Mahanon thinks he might have heard it before, from Krem perhaps, or over drinks at the tavern, but that doesn’t matter. Makes it better, even, because he can let Bull’s voice fade into the background, another wonderfully ordinary thing in a horrifically unordinary situation.

He washes the Wastes from his skin: first his face, then his arms and shoulders, his chest, until his brown skin is flush from it. He’s so filthy that by the time he’s done the bathwater is cloudy, and he still doesn’t feel clean. Bull notices him scrubbing frantically at himself, miserable in the dirty water, and he says, “I can have a fresh tub brought up, if you want.”

Mahanon feels like a spoiled child, and not in a good way. “I don’t think,” he starts, even as he’s wringing his hair of the grey water, but Bull stops him.

“No,” he says, “how about this: I’m having a fresh tub brought up. Here,” he offers his hands, helps Mahanon out of the bath and wraps him in a towel. “You wait by the fire. Have a bite to eat.” Mahanon peers dubiously at the plate of food, wondering if he’ll be able to keep it down. “That’s an order,” Bull tells him, his voice low enough to send a shiver down Mahanon’s spine. He nods mutely and sits on the couch in front of the fireplace, picks at a slice of apple.

Bull brings the second tub up himself, a little of the water sloshing over the sides and dampening the carpet. “Thought you wouldn’t want anyone up here right now,” Bull explains. “Did you eat?”

Mahanon smiles weakly. “A little.”

Bull nods. “A little is good. Come on. Time for another bath.”

This time Mahanon feels like he can almost relax. The water is hot and clear, even after he scrubs himself down a second time, and he leans back in the tub, his eyes half-closed. Bull talks to him a while longer, stories that he must have told a dozen times, and as he talks Mahanon feels himself get lighter and lighter.

The sun is just starting its slow descent, and the light in the room is all warm yellow, like summertime in the Marches. The water in the tub is just as hot as it was when he’d gotten in, and Mahanon know his face must be flushed with it; the pain is still there, but it feels like someone else’s, like he’s experiencing it second-hand. He feels warm and sleepy and still not quite real, but in a softer way than he had before: not scared that he’s going to wake up, just not entirely sure he _is_ awake. He wonders for a brief moment if he’s dead, if this is his reward: Bull and his bedroom and the mountains turned golden in the sunlight in the near distance. Then he decides that it doesn’t matter, that he doesn’t care.

He gets out of the tub, eventually, with help from Bull. They sit in front of the fire, Mahanon undressed but for a towel wrapped around his waist, and Bull combs his hair out for him. Mahanon’s always had a thing for having his hair played with. He almost falls asleep there on the couch with his head in Bull’s lap. He might – he closes his eyes for what feels like a moment and when he opens them again it’s dusk, and his skin is dry, although his hair is still damp.

“Reckon you could eat some?” Bull asks him. Mahanon looks up at his face, the sharp edge of his jaw and the crooked curve of his mouth, the worried crease in his forehead. He’d thought, before he got out, that he might forget it. He wants to memorise every inch of it.

“If you want,” he says.

He manages a few more slices of apple, a piece of hard cheese. Bull eats with him, finishes half the plate but leaves enough for if Mahanon decides he can eat more later.

The sun has disappeared behind the mountains, but the sky is still a medium blue, streaked with pink. Mahanon’s eyes keep closing without his permission. He wants Bull, suddenly and desperately, but he’s too tired to do anything about it. “Let’s go to bed,” he says, flattening himself against Bull’s bare chest, wrapping his arms around his shoulders. “Please. I want you.”

Bull laughs quietly. “Come on, then. Bed.”

Mahanon slides between cool sheets and watches Bull take off his brace, his boots, his trousers. When Bull climbs into bed next to him, Mahanon shifts to press their bodies together. Bull’s skin is always so warm. He tilts his head to be kissed, then lets Bull roll him onto his side, his head against Bull’s bicep. He falls asleep like that, safe in Bull’s arms.

+

Bull lies awake for a long time. Mahanon falls asleep before the dinner bell, curled on his side next to Bull, his back flush against Bull’s front. He’d wanted to fuck, Bull knows, but the poor guy was swaying in his seat, his eyes fluttering closed for long moments before he forced them open again. He’d used Mahanon’s want to get him to actually lie down in bed, and it was only a few minutes before he was asleep.

He’s not sure he could have, anyway, even if Mahanon had been all the way awake. It’s not what he needed tonight, even if he thought it was.

Bull watches the shadows start to crawl across the ceiling as night falls. Mahanon’s shoulders and back are covered in thick, freshly healed scars, the kind that look like they were cut deep and healed shoddily, standing out starkly against his skin. It makes him sick to his stomach to think of how he got them – how Bull’s own incompetence had led Mahanon more or less directly to them.

He clenches his teeth and breathes deep through his nose. It happened. Mahanon was hurt. Now Mahanon is safe. _Asit tal-eb._ It doesn’t matter now. There’s nothing more he can do.

Only – there is. Mahanon is the leader of the Inquisition; it’s only a matter of time before he’s in harm’s way again, and it appears that things are only going to get worse. Their enemies are getting stronger, the battles are growing bigger. Eventually they will have to face Corypheus directly.

When they’d met, Bull had offered himself as a bodyguard. So far he’s been utterly pathetic in that regard. He can’t let Mahanon down again.

When he’d undressed Mahanon it had taken all his strength not to react to his injuries. He knew Mahanon’s leg was badly injured: he’d seen the way Mahanon walked leaning on his staff, and Stitches had told him a little besides, that night they’d found him. He hadn’t seen it himself until this evening.

The skin was still marbled the sickly yellow and purple of an old bruise. The joints were swollen, his knee deformed like it had been magically healed around a dislocation with none of the proper realignment. His foot was twisted, the angle all wrong. “It’s bad,” Stitches had told him. “It’s not going to be the same again.” Bull had thought he meant it the same way his own knee would never be the same again. He was wrong: this was worse. Much worse.

What had they _done_ to him? Bull itches to tear the people responsible apart. Maybe if he bribes Dorian with enough fancy booze he’ll bring them back from the grave so Bull can murder them again, give them the deaths they deserve.

“Bull?” Mahanon’s voice is hoarse with sleep. Bull realises that he’s been clenching and unclenching his fists. Probably not the most comfortable for Mahanon.

“I’m here, Kadan,” he says. “You’re alright.”

“I’m alright,” Mahanon agrees, and he shifts, then groans. “It hurts,” he says.

“I know,” Bull says. Madame Vivienne had given Mahanon a potion for the pain, one stronger than Stitches’ field medicine, and Bull helps Mahanon sit so he can drink it. Mahanon makes a face, but takes the medicine, and is back asleep with his face mashed against Bull’s chest in seconds.

Bull doesn’t fall asleep for a very long time.

+

Waking up is like falling back into his body. He hits the ground fast and sits up in bed with a gasp, full of pain and fear and cold, harsh reality. Bull wraps his arms around him immediately, pulling him close enough that he can hear Bull’s heartbeat. “Shh, you’re okay, you’re here, you’re safe.”

Mahanon looks around wildly: his room at Skyhold, the fireplace burning low, the desk covered in papers he should have gone through a month ago. The grey light of dawn through the wide balcony windows.

He’d thought he was dreaming, the day before hazy in his mind. He’d thought he was waking up somewhere else. But his bed is soft, and Bull’s body is solid and real beside him.

Things fall back into normalcy quickly. Or, at least, Mahanon wants so badly for them to do so that he forces the matter. He attends a war table meeting that first full day back at Skyhold, does his best to keep focused even though it feels like all his thoughts are obscured behind a thick fog.

He lets the advisors bicker amongst themselves, appoints each mission to the one who brought his attention to it, signs what needs to be signed and agrees to everything said. It’s not the best way to do things, but it’s the only way he can do things right now.

As they’re finishing up, Josephine catches his eye. “If you have the time,” she says, “you should see Dagna in the undercroft. I believe she has some pieces she’d like for you to look over.” Mahanon sighs and agrees to go immediately: there is no time for him to sit around and feel sorry for himself. The end of the world waits for no one.

When he leaves the war room, Bull is waiting for him, leaning against the wall by the door with his arms crossed over his chest. “Alright?”

Mahanon nods and keeps walking, not because he doesn’t want to stop for Bull, but because he’s worked up the momentum he needs to keep moving without his leg giving him too much trouble. “Come on,” he says. “We’re going to the undercroft.”

Bull holds the doors for him, which would frustrate him if it wasn’t so helpful. Probably will frustrate him in the future, though, if he keeps it up.

In the undercroft, Dagna’s somehow dragged a long stone bench to her work table. “Inquisitor,” she says warmly, “welcome home. Please, sit.”

Mahanon does so, slowly. “What’s this about?”

“I heard about your leg,” Dagna says, bright and bubbly as always even though the topic is miserable. “I thought you might like a little help.”

“Let me guess,” Mahanon says dryly. “There’s an enchantment for that.”

“Not exactly,” Dagna says. She pulls a measuring tape for somewhere. “We’re gonna make you a brace. Like Bull’s,” she gestures, “but longer. I can enchant it for you if you want, but it’ll work just as well without – although, ooh, how cool would it be if you stomped your foot and fire happened?”

She measures him over his trousers: his ankle and knee, calf and thigh, around his hips. It’s ready by the next day. Dagna helps him into it, slides his boot through a stirrup and closes the bands tight with metal clasps. “Try standing,” she says, and he does. He’s shocked to find that the brace takes most of his weight. It’s lighter than he’d expected, and sturdy without compromising dexterity; he can walk almost like normal.

“It’s not perfect,” Dagna says. “You’ll still be sore if you overdo is, but it’ll get you around.”

“Dagna,” Mahanon says, “I could kiss you.”

Dagna giggles. “Please don’t,” she says. She shows him how to put it on and take it off, how to clean it, how to make sure the joints don’t go stiff and it doesn’t rust. “Let me know if you want that fire enchanted one,” she says with a grin.

Mahanon wants to get back into combat training right away, now he has (mostly) full use of his leg. He needles Bull about it for days, until Bull agrees to let him run drills with the Chargers, like he did when he first realised he would need to know how to dodge a sword and attack with his staff when he ran out of mana.

It goes well, at first: he still favours his good leg, even with his brace, but he manages to stay upright and balanced opposite Krem, even gets in a couple of solid whacks with his training staff.

It feels good to be training like this again, his muscles burning from disuse, breathing more heavily than he should be, but doing it anyway. It feels cleansing in an odd way. Cathartic.

Until Bull puts him in the ring with Grim, who pulls his hammer from his back and gives it a few practice swings, and Mahanon’s throat closes over and his chest tightens painfully and he’s back there, on the table, Augusta readying herself to bring her hammer down on him at the man with no weapon’s word.

He shouldn’t scream, shouldn’t give them the satisfaction, but he knows too well how bad it’s going to hurt, bright and sharp and radiating all the way up his leg, overwhelming so he can’t think of anything but the pain – he grits his teeth against it, but he can hear himself moaning pitifully in the back of his throat, the tears hot on his cheeks already, Creators, why won’t this end? The man with no weapon is going to use his tears, he already knows; is going to wipe them away with his thumb and say “poor boy, poor thing, you know all you have to do is be good and tell us,” and Mahanon is going to break sooner rather than later but he won’t let it be today, won’t let it be now, and he spits “no” at him and Augusta is raising the hammer –

“Kadan,” says a voice, familiar and calm, and Mahanon’s first reaction is to scream in anger because no no no how do they know they can’t take this too he won’t let them take this from him –

“Kadan, it’s okay, you’re safe. You’re in Skyhold. I’m here.”

Mahanon blinks and Bull’s face swims into view. Behind him, the training ring at Skyhold, empty.

“Bull?” he tries to say. He can’t get enough air, and it comes out a broken whisper.

“Yeah, it’s me, Mahanon. I’m here. You’re here. You’re safe.”

Mahanon gasps for air but his lungs are being squeezed by some invisible fist. Bull holds a waterskin to his lips, “Here. Drink this,” and Mahanon does, spilling as much down his front as he manages to swallow. “Breathe, Kadan,” Bull says when he’s done. “Can you do that for me? Deep breaths, come on, with me.”

Bull is breathing deep and slow. Mahanon tries. He breathes in deep before his breath hitches and it all rushes out of him at once. He gasps again, shallow. Bull is still breathing slowly and rhythmically. It feels almost like Bull’s breathing for him.

Mahanon manages another deep breath. And another. “That’s it,” Bull murmurs, “you’re doing so good.” Another. His face is wet with tears and his throat is sandpaper sore. He’s shaking.

“I’m sorry,” Mahanon says, not knowing what he’s apologising for.

“Shh,” Bull says, “nothing to be sorry for. Just keep breathing for me. There you go.”

Mahanon does, breathing in time with Bull, until he’s hit all at once by a wave of shame. What just happened? He thinks he must have been screaming for his throat to hurt like it does, must have been sobbing for his face to be so wet with tears. Had he collapsed? Had some sort of fit? And for what? Grim facing him with a hammer. “Oh, Creators,” he mutters.

There are people in the yard, although none in the training ring. He spots the Chargers lounging at the far corner of the ring, facing away from him and Bull, talking with each other and with passers-by. Others walk past on their way to their destinations, or stand in groups of twos or threes talking with each other. How many saw what just happened?

“Fuck. Can we go?” Mahanon asks. His voice is scratchy. “I really need to – to not be here. You can come back, I just need to – go.”

“Sure,” Bull says easily. “Let’s get you out of here.” He helps Mahanon to his feet.

Mahanon is embarrassed, and frustrated, and still most of the way paralysed with terror; but, he thinks as Bull walks with him back to his rooms, it must have been a fluke. Just leftover fear that needed a way out. And now it’s found its way out of his system, and it won’t happen again.

+

It happens again.

Bull sets Mahanon up to spar with Grim again the next day, and Mahanon lasts a good thirty seconds more than he did last time, but Grim swings at him and Mahanon freezes for a split second like his body has to catch up to his mind and then he’s screaming again, “No no no!” and swinging wildly with his practice staff. It glances across Grim’s breastplate before he crumples, scrambling backwards in the dirt, his eyes wide, tracking something that doesn’t exist in this space or time.

“Shit,” Bull grunts, and gets in there, pulling Mahanon close to his chest so he doesn’t hurt himself. The Chargers have stopped their drills and are looking on, worried. “Take a break,” Bull tells them. “Nothing to see here.”

“You heard the man,” Krem says. He herds the Chargers out of the ring, leaving Bull to bring Mahanon back to his body.

Mahanon’s legs are kicking weakly, his head shaking back and forth. He’s stopped yelling, but his mouth is still forming the word “no” over and over. It hurts Bull’s heart to see.

“Mahanon,” he says, “you’re safe, you’re okay. You’re in Skyhold. I’m here. It’s okay, Kadan, you’re okay.”

Mahanon’s eyes, glazed over with panic, focus slowly on Bull. He’s breathing too fast, too shallow, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “Hey there,” Bull says gentle, “you’re okay, you’re okay. Breathe with me, yeah?”

Mahanon does, his gasping breaths slowing and evening out. Bull continues talking to him, quiet and calm, giving Mahanon something to focus on. Mahanon’s breath slows, and deepens, and he shakes less and less until he growls “fuck!” and slams his fist into the dirt. “Fuck!”

“Hey,” Bull says, and grabs his arm.

Mahanon snarls at him, his face twisting until anger covers up misery. “Let go of me,” he says through clenched teeth. So Bull does. Mahanon gets to his feet awkwardly, keeping his bad leg as straight as he can. He wobbles a little but doesn’t fall, strides to the edge of the practice ring and slams the gate behind him.

Shit. “Krem, you’re up,” Bull calls. “You’re running training the rest of the day. If you’re at the tavern before the dinner bell, I _will_ find out.”

“Yes, Chief.”

Bull follows Mahanon, catches up to him on the steps to the main hall. Mahanon is fast, but his gait is off, leaning heavily on his good leg and taking more time than it should to bend his bad one. “Mahanon,” Bull says, “hey, wait,” but Mahanon keeps walking, head down. He doesn’t tell Bull to fuck off, though, even though Bull’s spent the past few days practically glued to his side, so Bull stays with him, walks next to him as he storms through the main hall to the privacy of his rooms.

Mahanon paces his quarters in a clumsy circle, his face like thunder. Bull sits on the edge of his bed quietly and watches him until finally Mahanon yells “fuck!” again and flings his fist out at the nearest wall. “Fuck!” He thrusts his fist against the stone again, and a third time. Bull rushes to stop him before he does it again, catches his wrist just in time: his knuckles are scraped and bloody, and they’re going to bruise.

“Hey, no,” he says, “that’s not going to help anything.”

“It’ll fucking help me feel better!” Mahanon growls, trying to yank away from Bull and failing. “Let go of me! Fuck you, let go of me!”

“You know what to say,” Bull says quietly. “Say the word, and I will.”

Mahanon glares at him, his jaw set, but he doesn’t say it. “Fuck you,” he says again, quieter, but his eyes are glassy with tears. For a moment he stands stiff, all his muscles locked up like he wants to run, but instead of tugging away again he finally collapses against Bull. “It’s not fair,” he grits out. “It’s not…”

“You’re right,” Bull says, “it’s not fair, and it shouldn’t have happened.”

“Useless,” Mahanon spits. For an awful moment Bull thinks he’s talking about him, how he failed to do his damn job and protect him, until Mahanon whispers, “How am I supposed to do this? I’m so fucking _useless_ like this, what am I supposed to do?”

“Hey, no,” Bull says, “don’t think like that. You’re far from useless. You still have your magic, you still have your mind –“

“Until I see a war hammer,” Mahanon mutters. “And then I lose that, too.” He’s shaking with pent up energy. The anger and the grief is coming off him in waves. “I don’t know what to do, Bull. I can’t think, I can’t fight – I’m supposed to be an inspiration but I’m _broken._ How am I supposed to lead the Inquisition like this?”

He looks at Bull like he’s begging him to fix this and it breaks Bull’s heart that he can’t. “You keep going,” he says. “That’s how you lead. The universe dealt you a shitty card when I – when the Venatori captured you. It’s dealt a lot of people here bad cards as well. You keep going even though you feel like you’re broken, and people will see that. It will matter to people.”

“Maybe you should have been Inquisitor,” Mahanon says. “Creators know, you would have done a better job with it.”

“You’re the only one who could have been Inquisitor,” Bull says, and he means it. “Not me, not Hawke, not the fucking Hero of Ferelden. You’re something different. I don’t know if I can describe it in Trade.”

“You don’t have to coddle me, Bull,” Mahanon says, looking away. “It’s nothing but coincidence that I became Inquisitor. Just luck. Bad luck.”

“I mean it,” Bull says slowly. “I know you can’t see it now, but you have to know. You’re more than you are. No one else could do it.” Mahanon opens his mouth to reply, but Bull continues. “You don’t have to believe me. You just have to keep going.”

Mahanon wipes at his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Fuck,” he says again, but instead of angry it comes out small. Then he laughs. “You make it sound so simple.”

Bull shrugs. “Perks of growing up under the Qun. Everything is simple. Even the complicated stuff.”

+

“Listen,” Dorian says, “I know you’re having trouble with battleshock, and I think I have something that can help.”

They’re in the library, as is usual when Mahanon comes to speak to Dorian about Inquisition business. It’s the first time Bull’s left his side for more than fifteen minutes since they got back from the Wastes: Mahanon likes to visit his inner circle at least once a week to catch up with them, ‘doing the rounds,’ Bull calls it, and Bull knows that there are things the others might be dealing with or thinking or doing that are none of his business. So Bull’s in the tavern with the Chargers, and Mahanon’s in the library with Dorian.

They’d spoken at length about where Dorian’s at with his research on Corypheus’ lineage, and then they’d swapped the kind of inane gossip their conversations usually devolve into, and then, when Mahanon was readying himself to leave, Dorian had stopped him.

“Battleshock?” Mahanon asks, confused.

“Is that no what it’s called in the South?” Dorian says. “I know the Qunari call it soul sickness – soldiers oftentimes experience it, but it’s been known to affect civilians too in times of trauma.”

Mahanon shakes his head. “I’ve never heard of it,” he says.

“Ah. That can’t be helping.” Dorian pauses for a moment. “After my father… tried what he tried, so many things would send me back there. The sight of blood of course, but also my favourite wine and dawn lotuses and the smell of cinnamon. They threw me back into that memory, like it was still happening. Sound familiar?”

Mahanon nods, wide-eyed. “But Dorian, you never said – I didn’t think –“

“I don’t like to dwell on it,” Dorian says. “That’s not my point. My point is: I can’t claim to understand what you’ve been through, but I _do_ understand the aftermath of it, and I know what helped for me.”

So that’s how Mahanon finds himself on the mostly-deserted battlements in the early evening learning a spell completely outside his area of magical expertise.

“Don’t think of the Wastes to begin with,” Dorian says, “I don’t want to be responsible for an attack – the Bull might murder me. Try something smaller. What were you afraid of as a child?”

Mahanon wracks his brain. Everything seems so insignificant compared to the Wastes, it’s hard to believe he was ever scared of anything else. But he knows that before the Wastes he was afraid if not of Corypheus then of what he represents; he knows he was afraid of the undead when he first saw them at the Fallow Mire, and of that awful house in the Emerald Graves. As a child, he was scared of so many things: Templars, slavers, Shemlen in general, of being possessed and of not being able to control his magic, of darkspawn and the Blight. None of these things scare him like before.

“Anything, as long as you can remember why you were scared of it,” Dorian says. “You don’t have to be scared of it now. Spiders, heights, the dark…”

“Okay,” Mahanon says, “um, darkspawn?”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Dorian says, somewhat belatedly. “But yes, that works. Now: what made you fear them? Did you ever encounter one? When were you the most afraid?”

Darkspawn were a story the elders of his clan told the children to keep them from wandering too far. None of them had actually seen a Darkspawn, as far as Mahanon knows, but that didn’t matter: the stories they told were chilling, violent and real, passed down through the generations since the early Blights, and they rung true in Mahanon’s ears.

They were described as Things That Were Once People. “If you saw one from a distance, you might have thought it your brother; by the time you were close enough to tell it was not, it would already be too late.”

This is what stuck in Mahanon’s mind as a child – not the darkspawn’s bloodlust, the cannibalism, the jewellery made from Elvhen children’s bones, but the idea of something familiar having been something awful the whole time. The idea that anyone could become one, keep their mind but lose their soul.

He’d had a recurring nightmare that he was Blighted. That he was changing. In his dream, he swore he’d kill himself before he had the chance to hurt anyone, but he couldn’t find a way to do it; he tried to keep the clan away from him, but they wouldn’t understand. He became trapped in his own head, watched himself rip his parents limb from limb, lure his friends close enough to kill and watch the terror in their eyes when they realised he wasn’t Mahanon anymore.

But by eighteen, Mahanon had thought he’d outgrown this childish fear. Clan Lavellan hadn’t seen darkspawn in centuries – how could they know what they were truly like? It was all stories made up to scare the children into keeping close: darkspawn couldn’t be as bad as they were in his own dreams. Besides, there had to be a Blight for there to be darkspawn, and he was certain he wouldn’t see one in his lifetime.

Then the Fifth Blight began.

His clan was north, in the Free Marches to the west of Kirkwall. A few months after they heard the news about Ostagar, Mahanon’s clan crossed paths with another, one that was travelling north from Ferelden to escape the Blight. They shared camp and food for a few nights, ate together, swapped stories.

This clan had lost two of their own to the Blight – two youths not much older than Mahanon himself. One of them had been rescued, recruited by Grey Wardens. The other was not so lucky. “We never found his body,” their First had told him, and that night Mahanon dreamed about darkspawn for the first time in years. This time, though, he wasn’t himself: he was the boy whose body hadn’t been found, half-dead and following someone he loved across Ferelden even as he screamed at himself to turn back, that following her could only end in death, his or hers; and through it all, a haunting song driving him onward.

When he awoke there were several long, sickening moments where he couldn’t move, could hardly breathe, and he swore he saw darkspawn gathering at the edges of the camp. But the moment he managed to scream they dissipated into nothingness.

“Do you have it?” Dorian asks. Mahanon nods. He’ll never forget that nightmare and how It froze him as he woke, the terror, the utter certainty he was being watched. “Think of how it felt, at the peak of your fear. How your body felt, what thoughts you were having. Try to bring that fear as close to the surface as you can.”

The prickling skin. The lead in his belly. The panic in his throat as he tried to move. The leftover melody in his head, ominous in a way he can’t describe.

“Now keep the fear and find the fade. Do you hear them?”

Only barely, a thousand voices whispering, not asking anything of him like demons do, not even forming any discernible words, but, “Yes,” Mahanon says, “I hear them.”

“The rest is simple,” Dorian says. “Like any other spell. Focus your intent, pull from the fade, and –“

Mahanon spins his staff and the whispers grow louder in an instant, still indecipherable but all around. A shape forms in the air before him, a skull composed of dozens of writing spirits, and – the memory’s fear is gone. It’s so sudden and so thorough that Mahanon stumbles with its intensity.

“That’s it!” Dorian’s smiling, his real smile, not the one he uses for visiting nobles or Mother Giselle. “First time, too. Impressive.”

Mahanon feels lighter. Like he’s been holding his breath until now. “That’s it? It’s gone? For good?”

“Well, not for good,” Dorian says. “But it will give you a break. It gets heavy, carrying these things.”

“You do this multiple times per battle,” Mahanon realises.

“It’s not hard to be scared when you’re facing down a hoard of Red Templars,” Dorian says dryly. “Cathartic, yes? And with the added bonus of scaring the shit out of anyone who needs the shit scared out of them. So – shall we try again?”

+

“Where were you this evening?”

Bull is lounging half-naked on Mahanon’s bed, watching Mahanon undress. It’s a very nice view: Mahanon entirely unselfconscious in front of him, revealing smooth brown skin piece by piece as he wanders around his space. Bull admires the long line of his back as he reaches up to undo the knot he keeps his hair in most days.

“I was with Dorian,” Mahanon says, using his fingers to untangle his hair before he picks up his comb. “You weren’t too worried, were you?” He turns to look at Bull, his expression anxious.

“Nah,” Bull says (lies), “I know you can take care of yourself.” He lays back, putting his arms behind his head, casual. “You two have fun being mage-y together?”

Mahanon’s eyes are sparkling. “You know that Horror spell he uses?”

Bull grimaces. It’s useful, but that doesn’t mean he has to be entirely comfortable with, just, the concept of necromancy as a whole. “Yeah.”

“It turns out if you’re on the right end of that spell, it sort of… has the opposite effect.”

“Huh.” Bull takes a moment to process this. “…Okay.”

“It was incredible, Bull,” Mahanon gushes. “It’s like – I was carrying everything that happened in the Wastes with me like rocks, and the moment I cast Horror they all disappeared.” He comes to Bull, climbs on top of him and lays on his stomach with his arms folded over Bull’s chest, his skin smooth and cool against Bull’s. “Dorian says it won’t last long, but fuck, Bull, it feels _amazing._”

Bull puts his hands on the small of Mahanon’s back. Having him mostly-naked on top of him talking about how amazing he feels is extremely distracting, but he thinks Mahanon knows that. He decides to play dumb for the moment, and pets at Mahanon’s lower back.

“That’s good,” he says slowly. “I’m not going to lie, Dorian’s weird dead person shit freaks me out, but if it helps, it helps.”

Mahanon hums. It’s the happiest noise Bull’s heard out of him in what seems like forever. “I just hope it works outside of practicing,” he says. “It’s weird doing battle magic where the only indication that you’ve done it right is your own emotions.”

“I’ll bet,” Bull says. Mahanon’s wriggling on top of him, like he can’t get comfortable. His good leg slips between Bull’s thighs. “Mahanon…” Bull says warningly.

Mahanon looks up at him through his eyelashes. “Oops,” he says, and rubs his thigh very deliberately against Bull’s cock through his trousers.

Bull lets Mahanon take the lead (if he needed to not be in control before, he definitely needs to be in control now) and it’s not long at all before Mahanon is rocking in his lap, his hands braced against Bull’s chest.

“Bull,” he gasps, “fuck, pull my hair,” so Bull does, laughing quietly at Mahanon’s predictability; “kiss me kiss me kiss me,” he chants, so Bull leans up to do so. He twists his fingers in Mahanon’s hair and gropes his ass and bites his lip, and he watches Mahanon fall apart on top of him.

He’s gorgeous like this, with his jaw slack and his eyes unfocused. Bull loves the way his muscles tense and relax, how he demands Bull’s attention. “Fuck,” he groans when Mahanon swivels his hips just right, “Kadan, you’re so good, so good for me,” and usually that kind of praise has Mahanon gasping and squirming, but tonight his jaw clenches and he stiffens, not in the good way. He doesn’t stop, though, doesn’t say the word or anything else – in fact, he rides Bull harder, his face the same kind of determined it gets during battle.

Bull lets go of his hair and grabs his hips, stilling him. “Wait, hold up – what’s wrong?”

Mahanon shakes his head. “Nothing, Bull, I’m good, come on.”

“No,” Bull says, “did I hurt you? Is your leg okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m great, I didn’t say the word,” Mahanon says all in a rush, “so fuck me.” But his eyes are flat, his muscles gone rigid. His cock is starting to soften.

Bull makes the decision. “Katoh.”

Mahanon freezes for a moment. Then, “Fine,” he says, and gets off Bull. He stands, pulling on his smallclothes and the loose shirt he sometimes sleeps in. “Now what? Are you going to leave?”

“What? No,” Bull says, sitting up. “I mean, I would if you wanted me to, but you don’t. We can talk, or just go to sleep – whatever you want.”

“What I want is for you to fuck me,” Mahanon says. “But you won’t. So –“

“What you need, then,” Bull says. “I know that something’s wrong, Kadan. You don’t have to talk about it, but I’m not going to do something that’s going to hurt you –“

“I’m not fucking broken, Bull!” Mahanon yells, whipping around. “You don’t have to, to, to treat me like I’m made of glass! Why does this shitty thing that happened to me have to define everything? Can’t we just pretend like it didn’t happen? Just for one fucking night just pretend like everything’s normal?”

Bull holds his hands up. “Woah. Hey. I would have done the same thing if you’d reacted like that before the Wastes.”

“Horseshit,” Mahanon spits accusingly. “I’m not stupid, Bull, I can tell when people are being careful with me. Can’t you just – just – hold me down and hurt me and not stop until I say the damned watchword? That’s what I want. That’s what I –“ He cuts himself off.

Bull frowns. “If we’re going to do that we’re going to have to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, I want to forget about it. Isn’t that the point?”

“You can’t use this to forget about it if something I do in bed takes you back there,” Bull says gently.

“I’m not letting it!” Mahanon practically shrieks. The anger rolls off him in waves, his hair beginning to float with static electricity. “I fucking refuse. I need this, I love what we have and what we do together and I’m not going to let them ruin it for me just because they happened to use the same words you do!”

Ah. He freezes then, his eyes wide. “Fuck,” he says, his voice breaking. “I didn’t want you to know that.” He looks utterly miserable now, half turned away from Bull with his shoulders hunched. “Please,” he says, “can we just forget it?”

Bull gets up. He’s itching to touch Mahanon, to let him know he’s there and that he cares, that he’s not about to go anywhere even if Mahanon can’t do what they do for a while, or ever, but Mahanon’s not exactly giving off huge ‘touch me’ vibes at the moment. “Why didn’t you want me to know?” he asks instead, standing near enough that Mahanon can come to him if he wants, or move away.

“I don’t want you to... pity me, or – I don’t want this,” he says, gesturing between himself and Bull, “to change. Like you won’t want me to tie me down anymore because they tied me down when they were hurting me. Or you won’t – you’ll stop calling me ‘good boy’ if you know _he_ called me that when he was pretending to be nice.”

Bull feels sick to his stomach. “Fuck, Mahanon, if I’d known –“

“I know,” Mahanon says, “that’s the – _please,_ Bull, it’s different. If I wanted you to stop I’d say so.”

“You can’t tell me you weren’t affected by it,” Bull tells him, frowning. “It yanked you right back into reality.”

“So what if it did?” Mahanon says. He’s crying now, not sobbing, just tears sliding quietly down his cheeks. Bull thinks that maybe he hasn’t noticed he’s crying yet. “It didn’t throw me back into the memory like Grim’s hammer does, it didn’t make me freak out like the dreams sometimes do – it just, I don’t know, you said it and I remembered and I shoved it away because _I’m not letting them ruin this as well!_”

_Fuck it,_ Bull thinks, and goes to pull Mahanon close to him, but Mahanon’s already reaching for him. He wraps his arms around Mahanon to hold him tight to his chest, and Mahanon clutches at him, his blunt nails digging into Bull’s back.

“Okay,” Bull says. “Okay. We’re okay. We’re going to figure this out.”

Mahanon says nothing, but he nods, and squeezes Bull tighter.

+

They go back to bed. Mahanon stretches out on his back and Bull pins him to the bed by his hips and sucks him off. Then he kneels over him and strokes himself until he makes a mess of Mahanon’s stomach and chest. Mahanon can’t quite get back to the space he was in before, when he was starting to rise out of his body like it does sometimes when he and Bull have a certain kind of really good sex, but it’s nice. He doesn’t feel afraid, and he doesn’t feel like he’s about to lose everything, even if it does seem like Bull’s being extra careful with him.

After, once Bull’s cleaned him up and made him drink a glass of water, Bull holds him close against his chest and runs his fingers through Mahanon’s hair until Mahanon’s close to falling asleep.

“I’m sorry,” Bull says eventually. It’s been long enough that Mahanon thinks it’s possible Bull thinks he’s asleep.

“What for?”

Bull sighs. “I failed you. I’m supposed to keep you safe, and I failed.”

“But you didn’t,” Mahanon says, going up on his elbows so he can look Bull in the eye. “You fixed it. You saved me. I’m here.”

“You saved yourself,” Bull says. “It took me so long to get to you, you had to drag yourself out of that place.”

“I wouldn’t have made it,” Mahanon insists. “You got there in time, Bull. I wasn’t trying to get out of there alive.”

“Shit,” Bull says. “That’s worse. You were being hurt, you were going to get yourself killed, and I couldn’t – what if I didn’t get there on time?”

“But you did,” Mahanon says again. “You found me. I knew you would. You have no idea – I was ready to bring that whole plae down on top of me and everyone else in it, I was in so much pain – they’d been feeding me magebane, it hurt so bad to do magic that I couldn’t even feel my leg – and then I saw you, and I knew I’d be okay.”

He’d meant only to reassure Bull, but now he’s started talking about it the rest of it rises up inside him like the tide. It all spills over: the cell they kept him in, the man with no weapon, the things they did to try and make him talk and the things he used himself to keep from talking. He tells Bull all of it in one long rush, unable to stop himself or slow down.

When he’s finished, he realises that he’s shaking. “Is it – is it cold in here?” He stammers, pulling the blankets tight around him. “I should, should stoke the, the fire –“ But the fire is still burning bright.

“Come here,” Bull says. “Let me warm you up.” Any other time he’d be leering as he said it, but he sounds, instead, oddly sincere.

Mahanon tucks himself into Bull’s side, Bull’s arm around his shoulders.

“Thank you for telling me,” Bull says after a while. “You didn’t have to.”

“I know,” Mahanon says. “I think I had to say it out loud, though.” He sighs, and burrows closer to Bull. Another stretch of silence, comfortable in the dark fo the room. Then, “Bull?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve never felt safer than I do around you.”

Bull lets out a long breath. His arms tighten around Mahanon, just slightly. He says nothing. Eventually, Mahanon falls asleep.


End file.
